Chris Abraham

Google, Yahoo!, and MSN already love you, blogger, so just write, write, write. If you have more time and an inclination you can continue reading.

Without doing anything to your blog, you have an advantage which is lots and lots of text that is generally topic-centric and frequently updated. You are already ahead of the game. Add to that that Google loves you and cares about keeping up with the blogosphere and you can safely stop reading now and be fine. Just make sure you write something twice a day.

Although the most important part of SEO is getting Very Important People to link to you, there is a lot you can do on your own that I will go into below (I also go over how I think Google works in How Google Probably Ranks Your Site in My Opinion).

First, never use pronouns. Keyword density is essential to how Google ranks you. Second, use variations on search terms. To illustrate the first two points, I will take a bit of copy and optimize it for search engines and their love for keyword density. Instead of this:

“Viral marketing is now an essential strategy for every firm. It has become as essential to small and large firms alike, both for its relative affordability and its potentially high effectivity. With the advent of the Internet, it has become amazingly efficient: all you need is a laptop and a compelling message.”

Try this:

“Viral marketing is now an essential marketing strategy for every marketing firm. Viral marketing, also known as relationship marketing, buzz marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, conversational marketing, and passion marketing, has become as essential to small and large marketing firms alike, both for its relative affordability and its potentially high effectivity. With the advent of the Internet, viral marketing has become amazingly efficient: all you need is a laptop and a compelling message.”

Yes, you’re appalled by its inefficiency and wordiness. Your boss would never approve, nor would your writing coach. Tough. This is not about winning the PEN/Faulkner, its about arousing Google’s algorythms.

Third, optimize your blog as though it were a traditional website. Be sure to add a “description” meta tag as Google uses it in search returns (and you can control Google’s description of your site). If you don’t want to top there, you can continue with the whole lots of meta tags. I will paste my tags at the end of here for you to enjoy. Also, make sure you give “alt” and “title” tags to all of your images and “title” tags to all of your links.

Four, find a Google Sitemap plug-in and use it.

Five, submit your blog as though it were a traditional website. I personally use Dynamic Submission, but there are a bunch. Web Position Gold is another fave. I choose Dynamic Submission because it allows me to spider my entire blog to within an inch of its life and then submit not just the site’s arteries but also all the way down to the site’s villi as well. In my opinion, search engines are lazy. They have only so many resources and so many nanoseconds in the day. They need to put first things first. So what I do before I spider the blog is set the index page of the blog to view 365-days of posts, or maybe a bunch of weeks, so that I can spider most of the blog from one “Import from Web.” When the import is complete, I change it back to showing only the last 7 days. I even maintain a separate box on which to host the Dynamic Submission tool because it’s such a processor hog. And then let it go. Seems to work like a charm. Why? Well, not because I am doing anything unseamly but rather just because Google and the rest sometimes miss something and I want to make sure that all the engines get everything. Every little dumbass link.

Six, make sure you use a ping server. If you don’t know a thing, start with filling out Pingomatic as best you can. That should be good enough for now. Blogger and WordPress.com offer a checkbox you can use to send out the ping. You can probably build it into your submission using the WordPress “Update Services” under Options/Writing, then scroll down. On MT it’s in Settings/New Entry Defaults/Publicity/Remote Interfaces. I use a long list that I will post under the Meta Tags below:

Meta Tags from ChrisAbraham.com
<link rel="DCTERMS.isreplacedby" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com" />
<link rel="meta" type="application/rdf+xml" title="FOAF" href="foaf.rdf" />
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" />
<meta name="ICBM" content="38.8886,-76.9855">
<meta name="geo.position" content="38.8886,-76.9855">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="keywords" content="Chris Abraham, Christopher James Abraham, Christopher J. Abraham, Chris J Abraham, Christopher Abraham, media strategist, online brand promotion, online brand protection, brand promotion, brand protection, new media strategies, nms, vbma, viral + buzz marketing association, search engine optimization, seo expert, defensive SEO, SEO promotion, Washington, DC" />
<meta name="description" content="Chris Abraham is a leading expert on corporate blogging, the blogosphere, online social networks, virtual communities, online brand promotion, online brand protection, online brand intelligence, online buzz marketing, online guerilla marketing, and online viral marketing." />
<meta name="DC.Description" content="Chris Abraham Official Blog" />
<meta name="title" content="Chris Abraham - Because the Medium is the Message" />
<meta name="language" content="en" />
<meta name="author" content="Chris Abraham" />
<meta name="abstract" content="Chris Abraham Official Blog" />
<meta name="publisher" content="Chris Abraham " />
<meta name="copyright" content="Chris Abraham">
<meta name="revisit-after" content="after 1 day">
<meta name="page-topic" content="Chris Abraham Official Blog">
<meta name="page-type" content="Personal Home Page">
<meta name="audience" content="all">
<meta name="generator" content="http://www.chrisabraham.com/">
<title>Chris Abraham - Because the Medium is the Message</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/styles-site.css" type="text/css" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/atom.xml" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 1.0" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/index.rdf" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/index.xml" />
<link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="http://www.chrisabraham.com/rsd.xml" />

Ping Server List for ChrisAbraham.com
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping
http://effbot.org/rpc/ping.cgi
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

(I was Inspired by BBC’s More Blog Search Engine Optimization Tips and Tricks)